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America’s
‘Establishment’ Has Embraced ‘Deep States’
By Philip
Giraldi
March 09,
2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- "NYT"
- Citizens
in many countries wonder how certain government
policies can persist in spite of widespread popular
opposition or clear perceptions that they are
harmful. This persistence is frequently attributed
to a “deep state.”
The phrase
is often applied to Turkey, where the nation’s
security services and governing elite pursue the
same chauvinistic and inward-looking agenda no
matter who is prime minister.
But every
country has a deep state of some kind. “The
Establishment,” as it’s been called in the United
States, where it evolved from the Washington-New
York axis of national security officials and
financial services executives. They are said to know
what is “best” for the country and to act
accordingly, no matter who sits in the White House.
This
comfortable consensus in America favors the forces
that provide a measure of stability in troubled
regions, including Turkey and Egypt. Such stability
comes at a cost, though.
In Turkey,
deep-state forces support not only oligarchical
interests but, it’s been plausibly contended,
criminals including drug traffickers, money
launderers and weapons merchants, when it suits
their interests. Some analysts believe Egypt, too,
has a developed, dominant, deep state, that is
actually running the government. As in Turkey, the
Egyptian version has grown out of the national
security establishment.
In both
countries real democracy has been the first victim.
Both Turkey and Egypt are now ruled by autocrats who
have among their first steps eliminated an
independent press and freedom of speech.
The
unwillingness of the United States to seriously
confront the effects of supporting forces that
enforce stability at the cost of democracy
ultimately buys friendship with no one, because
supporting promoters of strength to repress
radicalism largely serves only to empower those same
radicals.
Philip
Giraldi, a former military intelligence and C.I.A.
case officer, is executive director of the
Council for the National Interest.
© 2015 The New York Times Company |
